Joe Deutch Der Hexenkessel Jul 25, 2009

PARKER JONES PRESENTS:

DER HEXENKESSEL
A PERFORMANCE BY JOE DEUTCH

The demagogue overruns and implicates the American counter-culture in this quasi-political romp. Exploring with the right hand the vagaries of pop culture, the performer uses the other to pound what’s left. Within this conspiratorial landscape, a series of actions pits author-performer against actor-subject. Someone’s authority, a sense of repression and aggression slip in and out of focus. A short is introduced into the moral circuitry. Statements are obfuscated, existing only as an echo of their delivery. These seemingly empty gestures question the artist’s ability to serve as a social conscience, especially when they can no longer identify with the structure to which they belong.

Goals are suspect. Ideas discriminate, encounter themselves, and are aggressive. The interrogation, directed within and without, gives way to a reductive language of strategic experiences. A theater-of-negotiation, then, must become free of the “news,” focusing only on the impulses that resist purification. There, in the cobwebs of good taste, good fortune, and sound judgment, can be discovered the personal limits of abstract knowledge. Out here, they will not be redefined by the poetry they inspire. My goal is to survive. (Joe Deutch)

This is Joe Deutch’s first performance at Parker Jones. Notable recent group exhibitions include A Cottage Industry at P.S. 1 Contemporary (curated by Neville Wakefield), New Works at Marianne Boesky (curated by Clarissa Dalrymple) and Cut Ups at Centrum för fotografi. Originally from St. Louis, Missouri, Deutch received his MFA from UCLA and lives and works in Los Angeles.

Der Hexenkessel is presented as part of Perform! Now!

http://losangeles.foryourart.com/?s=see&item=233

RECEPTION BEGINS AT 10 PM
PERFORMANCE AT 11 PM